Hay Bale Cake

I wonder if anyone can give me some ideas. I am making a Rumpelstilskin cake for my niece on Sunday. I'm going to put Rumpelstilskin on top of a stacked up pile of hay bales along with the Millers Daughter, a baby and a spinning wheel.

I just wondered if anyone could give me a realistic effect for the hay. I've thought about just scoring the sugarpaste with a knife, using a sugarpaste extruder and maybe using buttercream, but I'm not sure that any of these are going to give the effect I want.

There is an excellent cake posted on Flickr which shows a fantastic effect....I wondered if they'd used dried coconut dyed to a golden colour.

I used a similar technique to what TheCakeDude did but I used a combination of a grass tip, 2 or 3 sized rounds and even a small star. I used 4 different shades of buttercream on it. http://cakecentral.com/gallery/2121521